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Another Couple 2 (Posted on 2023-08-20) Difficulty: 3 of 5
(Ia) Determine the longest common word/words with precisely four consonants in a row.
(Ib) Determine the shortest common word/words with precisely four consonants in a row.

(II) Extend (I) to cover the case of archaic/esoteric words.

*** No slangs, abbreviations/acronyms/proper names. Also, NO hyphenated words like X-ray, A-Bomb.

See The Solution Submitted by K Sengupta    
Rating: 5.0000 (1 votes)

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Some Thoughts from my wordlist | Comment 1 of 2
The shortest is among

   4 brrr
   4 cwms
   4 pfft
   4 psst
   4 tsks
   5 angst
   5 ankhs
   5 schmo
   5 schwa

The length 5 were included as the ones without a vowel are suspect.

The longest:

  21 anthropomorphizations
  21 counterdemonstrations
  21 straightforwardnesses
  21 undemonstrativenesses

If, however, it's required that no other consonants appear than those in a group of four, the choice is quite limited:

   5 schmo
   5 schwa
   6 aphtha
   6 archly
   6 asthma
   6 isthmi
   6 schmoe
   7 aphthae
   7 archway
   7 ashtray
   7 earthly
   7 eightvo
   7 orphrey
   8 earthpea
  11 earthlights

with the last being suspect, as it has two groups of four.

  fid=fopen('c:\words\words.txt','r');
  fido=fopen('c:\VB5 Projects\flooble\anotherCouple2a.txt','w');
  while ~feof(fid)
    w=fgetl(fid);
    if w==lower(w)
      conCt=0;
      good=false;
      for let=w
        if ismember(let,'aeiouy')
          if conCt==4
            disp(w)
            good=true;
          else
            if conCt~=0
              good=false;
              break 
            end
          end
          conCt=0;
        else
          conCt=conCt+1;
        end
      end
      if conCt==4
        disp(w)
      else
        if conCt~=0
          good=false;
        end
      end
      if good
        fprintf(fido,'%4d %s\n',length(w),w);
      end
    end
  end
fclose('all')



  Posted by Charlie on 2023-08-20 09:30:04
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